Demographic data fast
Demographic data fast
When doing research, it's often necessary to find income by Census tract data especially if you are tasked to identify low income Census tracts. A Census tract is a division of a county, much like a zip code. Tracts tend to have between 2,500 and 8,000 people. It's fairly easy to identify which county or city a project is in, but it can be more frustrating to identify the Census tracts that are in a project area. There are two different ways that you can get income by Census tract data.
One way is to use a new technology called Cubit. Cubit has a currently free report called the Poverty Statistics Report. This free tool provides cut-and-paste ready income by Census tract data in seconds.
Cubit works by you drawing your project or area of interest on an online map. Then you'll click on the Poverty Statistics Report button. In seconds, you'll have text, data and charts that identify low income Census tracts.
A second way to get income by Census tract data is to use the US Census' website. You can identify the Census tracts that you're interested in using the Census' tract by county maps. As fair warning, we've heard several complaints that these maps are hard to use and to understand which Census tracts are in which area. Once you get the Census tract numbers from the maps, you can then plug those numbers into the Census' FactFinder. Once in the FactFinder, you'll have a variety of income tables to select from. Pick your tables and then you'll be able to identify low income Census tracts in your project area.
You may also be interested in: Census Tract Finder; Census Tracts by County; and Census Tract Numbers